The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1887-03-11
Bundle Bees.


Prof. A. j. Cook, entimologist of
the Agricultural College of Michigan,
furnishes Gleanings, an interesting
chapter on humble bees from which we
excerpt the following:
The only bumble-bee that lives over
the winter, in our northern ATTITUDES,
at least, is the queen. Bee.keepers are
not surprised at this. The apiarist often
finds his bees all dead but handful
in spring, and among the survivors he
is almost sure to find the queen. DC.
casionally she is the only bee that sur
wives long journey. So, too, with
umble-bees, the queen possesses the
maximum of vital forces and endurance.
[ do not know whether the old humble.
bee queens that have done duty the
previous season live over winter or not
Very likely some of them may. How
ever this may be, the young ones car
tainly do.
In spring these large queens COM
mence operations. AS the workers have
all succumbed to the rigors of winter,
we can easily understand why we see
SO few bumble-bees in early spring,
and why those that work so merrily
upon the lilacs, dressed in their shining
robes of yellow and black, are all 50
large. The queen finds an old mouse.
nest, or some other convenient miniature
cave under stone, board, or clod, and
there stores mass of pollen on
which she lays her eggs. The larvae
develop much as do the immature hive
bees. When ready to transform to pupa,
they coat their cells as do the hive.
bees, with glue like fluid which
serves as close cocoon. These cells
serve afterward as honey.cells; and
though big and clumsy, even more so
than are the queen. cells of the honey
bee, yet in truth they are really much
like them; that is, they are strength
ened with wax exteriorly, and lined
with a glue.like cocoon interiorly. This
style of cocoon is we'll shown in melt
ing wax by use of the solar wax extrac.
tor, as with the honey bees cocoon it
contains very little silk, but is largely
composed of hardened glue like sub
stance such as lines to cocoons of most
moths.
Soon the queen has several compan.
ions. the workers, which now do the
outside labor, so that the queen remains
mostly at the nest. In July the queens
and drones begin to appear. Some of
the older writers tell Of two kinds of
workers in the bundle nests-the
large and small. 1t is likely that their
large workers were these young queens.
The drones are longer than the work.
ers. and smaller than the queens. We
often see these drones in late summer.
AS boy, called them stingless bees.
No wonder. In August the bees pair.
| once saw drone and queen humble
bee IN copulo They fell in the path
before me, and the queen pulled away
from the carcass OF the drone, which
surely had sacrificed its life in the per.
formance of its duty. These young
queens are the survivors of winter, and
are the perpetrators OF the species.
The humble bees do not swarm, so that
by July and August the nests are
large and populous, and so the red clo-
yer, which depends for the most part
upon bumble-bees to insure its fertiliza
ton and seeding, is fairly swarmng
with these valuable assistants of the
farmer, upon which he depends for the
seeding of one of his most valuable field
crops.
Darwin was the first to show by eab-
crate experiments that clover is depend
ent upon humble bees for full fertiliza-
ton and fruitage. DR.. Beal, my col
league here at college, has experiment.
ed for years in the same line. He finds
that clover covered with gauze will
seed only partially, unless humble bees
are caught and put inside the gauze.
In this last case, the humble bees work
upon the flowers, and a full yield of
seed is secured DR.. Beal has suggest
ed that [ experiment to learn how
the queen bumble-bees may all be pre-
served through even our most severe
winters, that our farmers may secure
each year the fullest benefit from their
valuable abors. Could we have hum
ble-bees early N tie season the ii =